I've been in the mood for some Wheel of Time lately and would like to play in the setting one day. I'm aware of the one and only RPG based on the property from many years ago. It is for the 3rd. edition of D&D. I recently purchased a copy to have in my collection.

I'm wondering if any out there have any idea how difficult it would be to run/play this game today and substitute the more streamlined D&D 5e rules in place of the parts of the 3e ruleset that are now streamlined in the more modern edition?

Has anyone tried this and/or considered it?

WoT rpg's small saving grace was it was (or was pretending to be) a full conversion of d20 rather than being "for" 3e, i.e. it had all its own classes and spells rather than just trying to be a setting supplement for 3e. Though in fact it was close enough to be convertible, this was somewhat to its detriment rather than benefit, it would have been a better game if it had struck out on its own more. I predict running 5e mechanics and declaring it to be Wheel of Time would result in the 5e drowning out the Wheel of Time-ness.

That last prediction might need some unpacking.

I played in what started as a Wheel of Time campaign. We had a couple good homebrew sessions with a small group, until the GM opened up the 3e books and classes to attract more players. Turned into pure D&D just off mechanics. The GM still tried to skin it as Wheel of Time at first, but eventually he acknowledged the obvious and leaned into running D&D with just more multi-classing and prestige class options.

That was my first exposure to something that proved true over several systems: unaltered rulesets trump settings. Savage Worlds with an inexperienced GM trying to run a 19th century steampunk game (should be an absolute lay-up with Savage Worlds, that's a sweet spot for it), but didn't have a setting document or character guidelines, just put the core book on the table, just felt like Savage Worlds characters casting Bolt. GURPS swashbuckling pirates campaign but without the GM strictly limiting character options, turned into just GURPS power builds.

I'll point out the WoT rpg itself remains playable, albeit dated. Casters do outstrip martials at high levels, but its not quite as fast or as severe as in 3e proper.

My own preference now would be the Whitehack rpg, and make sure to work with all players on their characters fitting the world. But that's a pretty niche engine to try to hook players with.

5e might be easiest to get players for, but if those players don't know the Wheel of Time universe I predict you'll get what I experienced and find you're just playing D&D. If you do go this route though, spend some time reskinning or statting up Wheel of Time monsters, don't slip up and drop in kobolds and dragons. And the magic doesn't match at all, female Aes Sedai and a very few half-mad male Source users would require you to sharply limit class choice and spell selection and spell power/frequency to get even halfway there. So now you need players on board with playing mostly martials, maybe one or two Aes Sedai or wilders, and the casters don't get all the book spells.

In fact I see I've left the most obvious point to the last. 5e casters and spells don't match Wheel of Time at all. There's probably a way to do it, but you'd need players on board with taking a hatchet to the spell system and spell selection. The more you do it right, the harder the sell I see it being, unless they're independently fans of the novels.